At MIT This Semester? Take ‘The Socialization of Television: Using Television to Create Communities’

By Adam Flomenbaum 

“TV was always social,” begins Marie-José Montpetit’s syllabus for “The Socialization of Television: Using Television to Create Communities,” a course being offered this semester by MIT’s Comparative Media Studies department.

The course will focus on the evolution of TV: how we have arrived at a more social TV experience and the future of this experience. Montpetit is more interested in exploring TV as a sociological force – something that creates communities and provides a common experience – than treating it as a “mere” technology.

The course will culminate in a final project in which students will work together to develop a new social TV application, allowing them “to explore the multiple facets of TV innovation from video technology challenges, to user interfaces, to content consumption and to business cases.”

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Ahead of the spring semester, we spoke with Montpetit about the origin of the course, the dichotomy between advances in both more social and more isolated TV-viewing experiences, and what social TV will look like in the coming years:

Lost Remote: You are teaching a course called “The Socialization of Television: Using Television to Create Communities” this semester at MIT. Can you talk about why social TV deserves its own class, and some of the topics you intend to cover?

Marie-José Montpetit: We started the class in 2009 with the rise of social networks and the start of the “multiscreen.” We felt – and we still feel – that the rapid socialization of TV content would give rise to better programming and also end the linear way of watching TV. It all happened. Now of course we are moving further. TV content creates communities that need to communicate. Sure there is Twitter but there is more. So the class not only addresses novel interactive content production but also goes down to platforms for creation and application development as well as to the technologies that allow it from the different devices to the Internet itself.

LR: You write in your syllabus that the Internet has certainly helped advance the social nature of television, but that it has also led to more isolated viewing experiences. How do you see this dichotomy playing out?

Montpetit: Yes, and both are social in some way. Even for very long-tail content there is always a community out there. And “social viewing” may not mean we watch all at the same time in the same room – far from there. I once said that social TV was for the dysfunctional family, one that has members all over the world. So sure there are the major social phenomena of reality shows and HBO blockbusters, but with the Internet, even obscure indie content can and will be shared (see: YouTube, which is becoming a TV platform).

LR: Students will ultimately create a “new socialized TV application.” Outside of check-in apps like tvtag and Viggle (which have failed and/or are failing), what are some of your favorite second screen apps on the market right now? What are some examples of past apps that students have created?

Montpetit: It is hard for me to talk about past student projects since they own them but we are not really focusing on the “second screen.” In fact, we do not even use the term “second screen” – there is only “screens.” A lot of the apps created are around the content itself (use of metadata for example), involve news gathering and multimedia, and use the different devices in a native way.  We have had projects in the past where TV content was used to organize gatherings of “real” people. So tons of original ideas.

LR: What excites you most about where social TV is heading in the next three to five years?

Montpetit: There will be more and more social features inside the viewing applications themselves (instead of needing more than one device) and going further than the current tweet feeds into shared content and UGC. Also we want to start looking at Social TV from the content production perspective and have social interaction part of the content creation not a post-production afterthought.

For more on what will be covered in the course, click here to download an abridged version of Montpetit’s syllabus. 

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